


in some way, i'm there with you

by jollypuppet



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Fluff, Love, M/M, Romance, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-26
Updated: 2013-07-26
Packaged: 2017-12-21 09:25:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/898649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jollypuppet/pseuds/jollypuppet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carlos keeps his heart in a box.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in some way, i'm there with you

**Author's Note:**

> I posted this a little while ago as a response to [this prompt](http://nightvalecommunitykink.dreamwidth.org/822.html?thread=132150#cmt132150) on the kink meme. It was midnight, I thought it was cute. :D
> 
>  **EDIT:** As of the release of Episode 33, Cecil's last name apparently isn't Baldwin. Edited accordingly.

_Reach deep inside the cavernous expanse of your chest, and pull out your heart, healthy and red and beating in your palm. Gently place it in a wooden box, protect it with symbols you know nothing of, incantations you cannot pronounce, and seal it away, on a shelf, or in a cupboard. Lend it out to your friends at your own discretion, but simply know that it is in the right hands, the hands of a person who truly and undeniably loves you, when, even far away from you, it feels like it's home, beating away soothingly inside your empty body._

_This way, no one will hurt you._

_\--_

Carlos only remembers these words after he's left alone.

He leaves his university, and his laboratory, and all of his friends, and the cramped, stuffy apartment that he so tentatively calls a home, and he gets inside his truck and  _drives_. He drives to the furthest reaches of town, where the lush green hills and thriving trees devolve into dry, cracked dirt and starving bushes. 

Carlos sleeps in his car that night, drawing circles and arrows on the map that he keeps inside his glove compartment with a red Sharpie by the light of his phone, until that, too, plunges him into darkness. He curls up and shivers and stares at the night sky through his windows, stars sparkling overhead. 

He remembers the words of a woman named Erika that he met a long time ago, a vagrant who had found him one night and knocked on his door. He can't remember what she looked like, but oddly enough, he remembers her words.

Suddenly,  _Night Vale_  sticks in his mind like a hot brand, and he can't explain why.

He lifts the red marker up to his chest, right above where his heart thumps underneath his skin, and draws a shaky rune, more out of instinct than out of actual memory.

\--

He meets Cecil on his first day in Night Vale, shaking the enthusiastic hands of the townspeople and hollowly returning their greetings and pleasantries. Carlos spreads his mouth from side to side, showing off his teeth (to him, like a predator) as is custom to display friendliness towards strangers, but it's only when his eyes fall on an unremarkable man that he actually smiles.

"Cecil Palmer." the man introduces himself, shaking Carlos's hand with not quite as much abandon as everyone else, but with the same (if not more so) level of intrigue.

Carlos does the same, and does not panic when he feels two of Cecil's fingers brush against his wrist, press almost inconceivably against the veins under his skin. Cecil's grin only widens, and Carlos knows what Cecil cannot find there.

\--

"What a peculiar little box you have here." Cecil muses in the periphery of Carlos's vision, picking up a small, oaken box with dark, swirling symbols etched into its surface. He handles it gently, and Carlos looks up in time to see the tattoos on Cecil's arm curl outward as if to embrace the box, cradle it and keep it safe, only to recoil with uncertainty.

Carlos blinks. "Go ahead and open it up, if you like." He busies himself with his work, but he knows that Cecil opens it -- can hear the lock click and the clasp flip open -- and the sound Cecil makes,  _oh_ , the absolute wonder that fills that magnificent throat of his. Carlos can practically hear those long fingers caressing the surface of a thin, glass compartment inside the velvety cushioning of the box's interior, hears him coo quietly, mingling with the humming machines and the oppressive atmosphere of anticipation.

"I somehow expected." Cecil whispers. 

Driving Cecil home, he pulls off to the side of the road and shuts off the headlights, climbs into the lap of the only man brave enough to lift the clasp on Carlos's past, and kisses him senseless.

\--

Cecil is reading the newspaper on the sofa in Carlos's (newer, roomier) apartment when he brings it up again. "I've seen older magic than that, and darker, too." Cecil says casually over a cup of honey tea. "That seems rather simple for an incantation. Rather... emotional."

"A woman named Erika taught it to me." Carlos mumbles, and Cecil hums as if he suddenly understands everything.

"Why did you use it?" Cecil asks, and his voice is quieter, filled with a hazy sort of trepidation that makes Carlos's skin crawl. He's lost the capacity for pity, can't stand the aching feel of all that sympathy digging underneath his skin, trying to soothe him by curling its sharp talons into his soul. His chest is empty and silent for a reason, and he hates when that reason is ignored.

Carlos shrugs, and he sits next to Cecil on the couch, gently taking one of the broadcaster's arms in his hands and stroking his fingers across the long, inky expanses of the tattoos he finds there. The black and purple tendrils curl around the pressure of his finger tips, comforting him cautiously. "I was engaged once." Carlos explains simply. "And I'm not anymore. That about sums it up."

Cecil doesn't answer him, just sits and lets Carlos's fingers dance across the soft, sensitive part of his arm, and as the tattoos sway easily back and forth as Carlos's movements grow wider, longer, the skin of his fingertips dye a dark purple, as if Cecil is concentrating all of his energy, all of his  _being_ , there.

"It most certainly does." Cecil offers, and says no more.

\--

He looks at it every time he enters the laboratory.

"Why do you keep it in here, anyway?" Cecil asks, watching the innocent heart beat away in its tiny glass prison. "I could understand your apartment, but why your laboratory?"

Carlos shrugs, reading the results coming from his seismograph, and the constant quaking of the earth slows down as he they embark on matters of the heart (literally, which is only a touch disturbing) as if the very planet is quieting down so it can listen.

"I don't think of it as something to hide, really." Carlos tells him. "More of a reminder, or maybe... an interesting specimen. Something for me to learn from." Carlos sees the way Cecil smiles fondly at the heart, like a beautiful, rare thing. "But clearly, it serves a much greater purpose in the hands of someone like you."

Cecil looks up, and his grin is enormous. "You're certain?" When Carlos nods, Cecil's body flickers for a moment with his excitement, static crackling around his tall frame before relaxing back to normal, the tattoos on his arms curled up tight in eager anticipation.

He stays for longer that evening than he normally does, keeps Carlos company through the dark, mysterious hours of the night, and the heart beats innocently inside its box, ready to leave whenever Cecil is. Carlos thinks that, for the first time since he sealed it away, he can hear it.

\--

Carlos wakes up the next morning, cool sheets pooling around his legs and the vague sense of something empty next to him, and realizes he's late for work. Very late.

He does not rush to get up. 

He lays in the soft confines of his bed, staring up at the lazily spinning ceiling fan, and wonders, vaguely, why the sunlight this morning is a soft pink, considering it's almost noon. But it's very pretty, and smells faintly of strawberries, so he doesn't mind. 

There's something different about this morning, he thinks, but can't be bothered to figure out what. He closes his eyes again, breathing in the deep, refreshing scent of the late morning, listens to the dull beat of his heart in his ears, slow and relaxed and --

... _Oh_.

He furrows his brow and places a hand over his chest, and...  _there_. There it is, beating away, a calm  _thump... thump... thump..._ against the bones and the muscles and the blood in his body, a ghost of something that hasn't been there in who knows how long.

Carlos knows where his heart is, and he smiles.

 _I love you_ , he texts to Cecil when he can finally wrangle himself out of bed, lazily shuffling into the kitchen to make a cup of coffee. He sends it without preamble, or signature, or anything but the pure meaning of those three words, softly saturating his message. He stays indoors all day, enjoying the peace and quiet mingling with the pumping in his ears and in his chest, and is only able to tear his focus away from his own diligent essence when he turns the radio on that evening.

And he's very, very glad that he did.

_I love you, too. Welcome to Night Vale._


End file.
